Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  Hardy cranked up the car and headed out of the garage, lumbering down toward Broadway and up the First Avenue hill toward an anticipated rendezvous with his old high school classmate. As he passed the trendy Italian restaurant just at the crest of the hill, he was struck with the name of the place—Sole Mio. Maybe an especially appropriate spot for his dinner with Marge Bland, he thought.

  Chapter 21

  Beth Bartalak hadn’t gone to work at all. She would have preferred to stay in bed the whole day, but managed to rouse herself, make coffee and toast for Cy’s breakfast and see him off. Cy didn’t ask any questions about why she wasn’t dressed for work. He probably didn’t even notice, she thought. He seemed to notice less and less about her recently. He was so preoccupied with doing a big deal with this drug thing that he didn’t seem to notice much of anything else. And maybe she was neglecting herself some. Except for her daily long run through the park, Beth didn’t do much lately. Most of what occupied her mind was that bitch Katya Karpov. She still had to go. Now more than ever. Cy seemed to have inordinate difficulty recognizing that fact.

  Beth had recognized the documents from the folder that Katya had given Cy as the original data from the six month studies on subject number one in the drug study, the now-dead Mr. Bagley. Beth had told Cy that it appeared to her that Katya had contrived some fake data sheets on subject number one, since the information in the file was not consistent with the data in the official file that Beth had diligently maintained and protected. Those were the data that Cy had seen and presented to both the investors and the DSMB. On the strength of those data, the DSMB had agreed to break the code and if, as Cy suspected, the subjects who showed such dramatic improvement were the ones taking the active drug, to stop the study for reasons of apparent efficacy. That would open the way for planning phase III definitive studies and guarantee a lucrative deal with Big Pharma. From there it was a straight shot to FDA approval and to the holy grail of the drug development business, a marketed drug.

  After Cy left for work, Beth decided to go back to bed and sleep until afternoon when she would get up and go for a run. She didn’t feel bad particularly, just out of sorts, disconnected. The feeling was akin to that she remembered from being given morphine when she had broken her leg as a teenager. At fifteen she had fallen from the high perch in a large live oak tree in the back yard where she often sat, daydreaming and imagining a life different than her real one. She sustained a severe compound fracture of her right femur in the fall. It was the prolonged rehabilitation from that injury that led her to discover the pleasure of distance running, a pleasure that had stayed with her ever since. She recalled that the morphine that she was given for the excruciating pain after the injury brought on a feeling of detachment. She had often thought that morphine didn’t really relieve pain, it just caused you not to perceive it as yours, to view the pain from a distance. It felt to her as though that was how she was viewing everything lately, from a distance, as though she were living in a separate space, apart from that other space where reality was happening.

  Beth had slept for several hours when she was awakened by the sound of the TV set that she had left playing when she went back to bed. She wasn’t sure why the sound suddenly awakened her. What she saw on the screen was a news conference that had interrupted the regular afternoon programming. The principals were the chief of police and the district attorney who had called the news conference to announce the arrest of the alleged murderer of Bonz Bagley. Beth had never heard of Jody Dakota but she didn’t care who he was. The news raised her spirits. She felt a lot better than she had for a while. She smiled to herself as she entered the bathroom to shower and dress for her run. Good, she thought. That little matter is over and done with.

  Emerging from the shower, Beth paused in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the bathroom door. She still looked good she thought. Her long tan legs could still attract attention. She was sure that Rory Holcomb had noticed them. She donned her blue running shorts and an orange tank top and looked again at herself in the mirror. Cy ought to pay her more attention, she thought. She needed to work on that.

  On her way to the door, she stopped by her study and took the hammer model Colt pistol from the desk drawer where she had placed it earlier. She held the gun for a few moments, relishing the heft, the substance of it and then placed it carefully in its rightful spot at the center of the rare gun collection in the glass display case. No need to hide it any longer.

  Shane and Katya did not own a television set. That was Katya’s idea and it was fine with Shane. He thought that watching TV was an activity that was usually done as an attempt to isolate oneself from reality. While he was not averse to blurring the lines between fantasy and reality in his mind, he didn’t need the inanity of the telly to accomplish that. On the rare occasions when there was something being aired that he wanted to watch, he could usually get it on his laptop courtesy of the Internet.

  Shane poured a glass of sherry, picked up his laptop and wheeled himself out onto the deck. The alley was quiet. The afternoon sun painted a broad brushstroke of brilliant white across the private space that was his viewing stand for the parade of human activity in the small world below. He turned on the computer and began a search for the broadcast of the news conference. He located the site but the glare of the bright sunlight on the screen obscured the picture. He wheeled himself back through the French doors inside, continued down the long corridor to the bedroom and parked next to the windows overlooking Third Avenue.

  Shane hadn’t seen either the police chief or the DA in a long time and he was surprised at how changed they both were. Not surprisingly, they were grayer and thicker in the middle than he remembered them, but there was also something different about their faces that appeared to be more than the consequences of passing years. It bothered Shane that he couldn’t define the changes more precisely.

  But, they were the same guys, still capable of staging an accomplished public performance. Obviously in their element, the chief and the DA took turns speaking their well-rehearsed lines. To the uninitiated, it would appear that the two components of the criminal justice system that the men represented were parts of a well-oiled, efficient, and effective law enforcement machine that functioned smoothly in the relentless pursuit of any misanthrope who dared to threaten the safety of the citizens of our fair city. Of course, Shane and anyone familiar with the reality of the situation knew that successes in capturing the city’s criminals were largely the work of a few dedicated cops who did their job in spite of an often-dysfunctional hierarchy. Shane supposed that the officials served a purpose. Someone had to stage the performances that were necessary to keep the larger audience at bay, defend the territories where the dedicated cops did their work from overzealous scrutiny by people who didn’t understand the process.

  As he watched the performance, Shane reviewed the Bagley murder investigation in his mind. It seemed patently obvious to him that Jody Dakota could not be the murderer. There was the matter of the gun. No matter how limited the ex-music star’s mental capacity was, he would not have voluntarily relinquished his gun if he knew that it was the murder weapon. Impossible. Shane was surprised that Hardy Seltzer didn’t grasp that critical fact. A single critical fact that cannot be made to fit the story negates the entire theory, collapses the house of cards. Rule out all of the obvious possibilities and see what’s left, the great detective would have said. Well, to Shane’s mind, Jody Dakota had ruled himself out when he gave up his gun to Hardy without putting up a fight.

  Shane still thought of this as the Case of the Devil’s foot. The unusual running gait that was vaguely familiar to him was a key. If only he could link the gait to a specific person Shane believed that the pieces of the puzzle would fall into place. He wondered if there was any way to get more information about Elizabeth Reid, daughter of the Texas lawyer and heir to the rare gun collection. Was she an athlete? Did she have an old injury of some sort that altered her running gait? Was Eliza
beth Anne Reid, formerly of Greensward, Texas, marked with Shane’s imagined Curse of the Devil’s Foot that would be her undoing? Was there any way to connect this mysterious woman to Nashville, any possible reason for her to pump four shots into poor Bonz Bagley’s brain? The fact that there were four shots still puzzled Shane.

  Shane really was surprised that the police chief had encouraged Hardy to work with him and for the two of them to pursue Shane’s theory about the murder. He was very pleased about that. Hardy’s fully functioning legs as well as his investigative experience and his access to information would be major assets. And Shane was growing fond of the detective. Shane thought that Seltzer had some things to learn yet about how to solve a murder, that his thinking was too conventional, but he was good at his job and he was entertaining company. Hardy took himself a trifle too seriously, but Shane was starting to loosen the old boy up a bit. If only Shane could convince Hardy of the benefits of a slowly consumed excellent sherry, he might possibly metamorphose into a real human being. That would also make him a better detective. Hardy Seltzer needed to learn how to enjoy himself.

  When Shane turned his attention back to the computer screen, the police chief and the DA had been replaced by the familiar imposing persona of the attorney, X Coniglio. Apparently Coniglio had arranged his own press conference in an effort to counteract the public impression that the law enforcement officials had tried to create around the arrest of Jody Dakota.

  Coniglio was a local personality who carefully cultivated an idiosyncratic public image. He was tall and thin with a mass of unruly shoulder-length white hair. He usually wore a black waistcoat with a brilliant red ascot at his throat, and, on occasion, he either wore or carried in his hands, a tall black top hat with which he liked to gesture in an exaggerated way to emphasize a point. Coniglio had created for himself a lucrative professional niche as the defender of highly visible personalities from the city’s thriving music world, an activity at which he was remarkably effective. And the extracurricular activities of the music crowd were a constant and reliable source of business. Some years earlier, X, a notorious activist for liberal political causes, had run an ill-fated campaign for governor in the Democratic primary. He attributed his ignominious loss of the contest to his odd single character first name, which he steadfastly refused to explain, and to a public bias against his obviously Italian surname rather than to any personal ineptitude as a politician.

  Coniglio was in high dudgeon, railing at the blatant disregard of legal rights and human dignity by the police department—specifically naming detective Hardy Seltzer as one of the offenders—in their treatment of his client, an upstanding citizen who had been a significant contributor to the city’s noble history, its legendary reputation as a bastion of country music. Waving his top hat in the air, he exclaimed, “Little Jody Dakota is an innocent man who was living a quiet and peaceful life until this city’s law enforcement machine descended upon him with outrageous charges of a crime of which Mr. Dakota knows nothing. Apparently our city’s finest,” he emphasized the words for sarcastic effect, “care less for the welfare of our law-abiding citizens than for finding a scapegoat to obscure their abysmal failure to hunt down the actual perpetrator of a heinous murder committed in broad daylight on a Lord’s Day morning in the very center of our city. Mark my words, people,” he waved his hat in the air again. “The sword of true justice will rise to smite the misguided and illegal efforts of this city’s law enforcement establishment and, mark my words, good people,” he thundered.” Heads will roll!”

  “Wow,” Shane said aloud.

  He closed the laptop and started back down the hall toward the front of the flat.

  “Shane,” KiKi’s greeting rang out, echoing down the corridor, “I’m home.”

  “I’m on my way up there,” Shane responded.

  They met just as Shane was entering the living room. KiKi rushed to him, hugging him around the shoulders and pulling him close to her where she held him for a few moments. She finally released him and leaned down and kissed him full and warm on the mouth.

  “Wow! Shane said, “Just…wow!”

  KiKi did not appear particularly happy when she separated from him and walked over toward the fireplace. She stood there looking at him without speaking.

  “So, my love,” Shane said, “should I inquire as to what I owe this exhilarating display of affection or just relax and enjoy it?”

  “It’s just that when I occasionally get a glimpse of the forest of my life unobscured by the trees, I realize how fortunate I am.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that I would be considered a very reliable source of good fortune, my love.”

  “You are the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I prefer to believe that this was destined by The Fates or whomever is in charge of human destinies,” Shane replied.

  “Well, whatever the reason, I still consider myself, us, fortunate.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Shane answered.

  Shane wheeled himself to the bar to refill his glass of sherry.

  “Maybe I’ll join you,” KiKi said.

  Unusual, Shane thought, but he didn’t say so, just opened the case that contained the Oxford sherry glasses, removed one, held it up to the light, and then placed it on the bar and filled it with a generous portion of his Lincoln College Sherry.

  He rolled himself over to KiKi, handed her the glass, and said, “So, tell me about your day.”

  She paused to drink deeply from her glass of wine.

  “This is really very good wine,” she said. “I can see why you’re so fond of it.”

  “Tell me about your day, KiKi,” Shane repeated.

  “Yes, well,” she said, walking over to sit on the sofa opposite him, “it appears according to Cy that the DSMB…”

  “Sorry, my love, DSMB?” he queried.

  “That’s the data safety monitoring board that oversees the studies of the drug.”

  “I see,” Shane said.

  He didn’t understand what such a board would do but didn’t want to change the course of the conversation and so didn’t ask.

  “The DSMB," KiKi continued, “has broken the code for the study at Cy’s request and it turns out that the subjects who were taking the active drug were indeed the ones who showed such marked improvement.”

  “And?”

  “And, the results show such dramatic improvements in the subjects on the drug that, even though the numbers are very small, the board has agreed with Cy’s request that the study be stopped for the reason of apparent efficacy.”

  Shane thought for a moment and then said, “At least that means that no one will continue to take the drug. Right? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “You mean the right thing done for the wrong reason,” she said. “I suppose that’s true. But what that means is that Cy will forge ahead with design of the larger definitive phase III studies that the FDA will require before approving the drug for marketing. He’s probably scheming with some big pharmaceutical company at this moment, convincing them to buy out his little company at some exorbitant price. I’m convinced that this drug is a potential killer, Shane. This can’t be allowed to happen.”

  “I understand, my love,” Shane answered. “I understand, but won’t this at least buy time for your scientific misconduct complaint to force the issue?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I guess it gives me time to get all my ducks in a row. This is going to be a dogfight and the ferocity of it is likely to be even worse now. I’ll need all the ammunition I can muster. Speaking of ammunition, did you get a copy of Bonz’s autopsy report?”

  “Not yet,” Shane answered. “But Hardy Seltzer is coming over tomorrow and I’ll see if he can bring a copy.

  “Fine, fine,” KiKi said, then. “I’ll need your help with this, Shane. If I’m dealing with crooks here…”

  Shane interrupted her, “We,” he said, “not I.”

  “OK,” She continue
d. “If we are dealing with crooks here as I suspect, we need to put together the best case possible before I take it to the dean. This is your area, not mine.”

  “I do have some experience in putting together cases, my love,” he responded. “I’m delighted to help.”

  Shane was in fact delighted that he might be of professional help to his brilliant scientist wife. It had always seemed to him that her profession and his former one required a very different view of things and different skills. He thought that those differences had sometimes threatened to put more space between them than felt comfortable. It could be immensely interesting if the chasm he imagined separating the two endeavors were not as broad as he had thought.

  As KiKi was getting up and starting for the kitchen, she turned suddenly toward Shane and asked, “Do you know a lawyer in the city named Mitchell Rook?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Shane said. “What kind of a lawyer is he?”

  “Not sure, maybe business law?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I had an odd email from him. Said he was doing some ‘due diligence’,” she drew the quotation marks in the air with her fingers, “that might have something to do with the company that Cy formed to develop his drug. Said he would like to talk with me.”

  “Hmm,” Shane responded. “Let me see what I can find out about him. Why don’t you give me some time to do that before you respond?”